Source: Electronic Telegraph (The Daily Telegraph online, London, UK) Issue 723
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Drugs tsar to lead Labour crime fight
By Tom Baldwin, Political Correspondent

TONY Blair will take the first step tomorrow towards the creation of an
Americanstyle "drugs tsar".

The Prime Minister will announce a new Cabinet taskforce whose priority
will be to appoint a head of the Government's campaign against the
recreational use of drugs. The move will be accompanied by measures in the
Crime and Disorder Bill to strengthen the power of courts so that they can
introduce mandatory drug treatment and testing orders for convicted
burglars and thieves suspected of being addicts.

The threemonth orders would include random testing so that checks could be
made that offenders were staying off drugs. A Home Office official said UKP 1
billionworth of property was stolen each year by heroin addicts; the new
laws were designed to break the link between drugs and crime.

A Downing Street spokesman said he hoped that the new "drugs tsar" would be
in place before the end of the summer. "Whoever gets this job should have
real clout and direct access to Whitehall," he said. "We want to give this
problem the priority across Government it deserves. It will be a valuable
added weapon against one of the great evils of our time."

But last night Paul Flynn, the Labour MP for Newport West, criticised the
plan and called for a Royal Commission to examine alternative policies on
drugs. He told The Telegraph: "I think setting up a drugs tsar will be
about as successful as prohibition of alcohol was in America in the 1920s.
The present system of banning all these substances creates a gulf of
misunderstanding between the generations and strengthens the hands of the
criminals who run the drugs business."

But the spokesman said the work of the American drugs tsar had been
"substantially successful", and said: "We have decided to act speedily to
stop Britain getting into the state that the US was in."

He said there were no plans as yet to import other American drug
enforcement policies such as mandatory blood and urine tests for public
servants.

The drugs tsar, who is tipped to be Ian Oliver, the former Chief Constable
of Grampian Police, will coordinate the work of the police and other
agencies. He will report to the new committee, to be chaired by Ann Taylor,
the Leader of the Commons, and which will include Jack Straw, the Home
Secretary, Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, and Frank Dobson, the Health
Secretary.

Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1997